Maintaining credibility as customer experience custodians

Marketers are increasingly becoming custodians of the customer experience within organisations. However, unless they deliver a consistent branding experience, marketers risk losing credibility and ultimately guardianship of the customer experience.

As discussed in my previous post, governance and compliance may be viewed as marketing ‘hygiene’. In contrast, productivity benefits add value to marketing teams and the rest of the business.

The importance of good business hygiene in functions such as marketing cannot be overstated. The potential costs of compliance failures – in reputation as well as financial terms – can be considerable.

So how can marketers convince business decision-makers to invest in a marketing resource management platform that meets governance and compliance requirements and improves productivity?

At Simple, we work closely with clients and prospects to identify and present the benefits of such an investment.

For example, we help clients document and streamline their existing processes within our platform.

This enables them to identify efficiencies to reduce costs and increase speed, raising the value of marketing to the organisation.

The platform also provides metrics that clients can use in developing a business case.

Businesses that implement a marketing resource management platform will replace ad-hoc processes with well-mapped processes that include clear timelines and clarify the role of every participant.

Not only does this improve the experience of existing team members, but it enables new recruits to get up-and-running, following correct procedure, instantly.

Marketing resource management platforms also provide additional accountability – an attribute welcomed by businesses as well as marketers themselves.

Some businesses are building metrics based on marketing resource management platforms into marketers’ key performance indicators – such as requiring 100% of all marketing campaign approvals to be made via these platforms to ensure all compliance and brand governance needs are met.

Marketing resource management platforms also enable businesses to support processes with data and analysis.

For example, if a particular team generally requires many revisions when they brief their agencies, it may be a sign that brief-writing training would shorten their go-to-market process and reduce agency costs.

Similarly, if marketing campaign approvals spend weeks in legal or awaiting CMO sign-off, it may indicate that changes to the marketing process or approvals matrix are needed so that deadlines may be met.

Or if one team’s output requires significant brand oversight, it may indicate that their brand governance documentation and processes need to be updated.

This focus on data and analysis helps remove the taint of subjectivity that has characterised many marketing operations in the past – and helps entrench the credibility of marketing as customer experience custodian within the organisation.

Once the business case is proven and signed off, marketing (and related teams such as IT) must tackle implementation. This means delivering the platform itself and associated changes to processes and culture.

At Simple, we help clients develop change management communication programs to facilitate this process. Some clients will create tailored content to deliver tips about how to use our platform. They also use our marketing collateral to understand the full capabilities of our platform.

We also help clients deliver face-to-face or online training for marketing and the broader business. Some clients choose to appoint ‘champions’ among their personnel to act as advocates for the new platform and related processes and cultural change taking place across the business.

So what are some of the real world benefits clients have achieved from delivering the Simple marketing resource management platform?

Online bookmaker Sportsbet operates a thriving internal creative studio that creates marketing materials and creative assets so its marketing team can send out a constant flow of messaging across digital and traditional marketing channels.

Sportsbet prides itself on its responsiveness and needed a better way of managing marketing requests and streamlining its marketing workflow. The studio and design team also faced the challenge of managing the ever-increasing volume of marketing requests it was receiving.

The business implemented Simple to help standardise, streamline and improve internal marketing requests and workflow management processes, while preserving the agility and speed at which the team was able to operate.

The deployment helps enhance how marketing stakeholders request campaigns through improved briefing, as well as increasing visibility of the marketing function. It also generates efficiencies in the creative workflow process – particularly when it comes to passing jobs between staff.

A number of Simple clients use the platform for visibility and instant progress updates across large volumes of activity. Some customers – including Sportsbet – use digital Kanban-style boards for clear visual tracking of the flow of work from creation to approval.

For clients that require marketing activities to move quickly, Simple enables marketers to gain rapid access to the information they need: work in progress can be assessed at a glance, alongside planned activities, resource allocation and results to date.

Furthermore, they can use the Simple asset library to facilitate the review and reuse of existing creative assets. While digital asset management is a proven concept, linking assets to results achieved by previous campaigns within a marketing resource management platform can deliver considerable productivity and effectiveness improvements.

Simple helps marketing leaders combine governance and compliance with productivity to secure the credibility they need to remain custodians of the customer experience within businesses. They can deliver a consistent branding experience and processes backed by rigorous data and analysis. Ultimately, they can help the marketing function realise its potential as a leading contributor to business success.

About The Author

Emma Sutton is the Senior Customer Success Manager, Simple which is a corporate member of the Which-50 Digital Intelligence Unit. Our members provide their insights and expertise for the benefit of the Which-50 community. Membership fees apply.

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